In recent years, a number of breakfast cereals and yogurts have used clusters normally formed from grain, cereal and/or chopped nuts held together with a sweetener or natural binder, such as honey, and agglomerated into relatively small, generally spherical pieces or clusters. By agglomerating grain, cereal and/or chopped nuts with honey, which is common in forming discrete nuggets or clusters, the resulting clusters can be dispersed throughout normal breakfast cereals to produce added fiber and added variety for increased consumer acceptance of the breakfast cereals. These small, generally crisp clusters, spherical bodies or nuggets are well known in the food industry and are also used to produce snack bars, cookies, additives for yogurt. In some breakfast cereals, dry fruit pieces are also added with the dry clusters to provide both fruit and fiber in standard breakfast cereals. The proliferation of uses for cereal, grain and chopped nut clusters has presented one major commercial problem, the solution of which has heretofore escaped the breakfast food and yogurt industry. Clusters of grain and/or chopped nuts agglomerated into small spherical bodies by natural binders, such as honey or sugar, are relatively bland in taste, organoleptic characteristics and chewability. Consequently, breakfast cereals which employ the normal clusters of grain and/or chopped nuts add fruits, almonds and a wide variety of other separate and discrete food particles for totalizing the perceived nutritional characteristics of the breakfast cereal. There is a substantial commercial desire for creating grain, cereal and/or nut clusters with a fruit component; however, the only viable effort in this area has been the use of small pieces of dried apples which are agglomerated with grains and/or chopped nuts into small clusters or nuggets. Such clusters or nuggets .do have a fruit constituent; however, the constituent is no different than adding separate dried apple bits to the cereal. Dried apple bits, whether part of the cluster or separate in the cereal are extremely chewy and have a low release of apple flavor when consumed. Indeed, unless the dried apple bits in the experimental clusters are chewed separately no fruit flavor is released. There is no acceptable way to release a distinguishable fruit flavor, except the apple flavor, which is weak. In summary, there has been no successful procedure for creating the commercially demanded clusters with an acceptable fruit constituent, especially a constituent that can be used for several distinct fruit flavors. Dried apple bits have not been successful because they remain as dry apple bits or pieces with the low fruit release and the inability to produce a flavor, except an apple flavor which is extremely low organoleptically. It is conceivable that other dried fruits could be chopped into small pieces and used in the clusters; however, they would retain their tough texture, difficult chewability, low flavor release and the inability to be agglomerated with grains or chopped nuts by natural binders, such as honey. The use of dried fruit bits would be extremely expensive, produce unacceptable texture and remain no better than using separate dried fruit particles in a breakfast cereal.
The production of granola has included fruit paste; however, the granola must be held together with relatively high fat substances. When such substances are dried they are fragile and can not be incorporated as discrete small clusters including fruit and grain as is demanded for an acceptable and commercially viable fruit clusters.